| Three 'C's that spoil the big
E
The last word by T.N. SESHAN |
Indian elections are a world wonder. With 600 million voters, there
are more voters in India than in the rest of the world where democracy
is practised. An Indian general election is a gigantic exercise where 600
million votes go to nine lakh polling booths manned by 45 lakh civil personnel
and 15 lakh policemen. In all the elections in the last 46 years we have
never used the defence forces for any aspect of election work. By and large
our elections have been peaceful and our voting percentage of about 55
to 60 is better than what most countries, even much more advanced and educated,
are able to achieve.
And we complete the election process which compared to the infrastructural
difficulties is well and truly fast, we finish counting about 300 million
votes in less than two or three days. Our statistics are truly impressive.
Thousands of candidates, thousands of tonnes of paper used officially,
thousands of staff, and a thousand crores is spent on a general election
from the public exchequer.
That the elections are leading to "fractured verdicts" where no single party has a majority is not the fault of the election system. That this is leading to unwieldy, cumbersome and unstable coalitions is also not the fault of the election system.
But all this is not to say that our electoral system has no defects. The boundaries of constituencies have not been equitably redrawn after the 70s and much population movement has taken place since then. Many constituencies have remained reserved for SC/ST members for almost 50 years. We need to clean this up.
Our electoral rolls are defective. Names that ought not to be there are there; and names which ought to be there are missing. Some of this is due to voter apathy; but a great deal is due to the procedure for getting oneself registered as a voter. Even the most educated do not know how this is done.
We have too many parties, seven or eight national parties, 40 to 50 regional and state parties and another almost 600 registered parties. And at election time we have a tremendous rush of independent candidates.
But more than all these what vitiates our elections is the way they have become a war of cash, criminality and corruption.
In 1977 the appalling amendment was made to the election law that while the limit of expenditure by the candidate would be laid down, this need not include expenditures incurred by political parties and friends. This has opened up the way to parties spending enormous amounts of ill-gotten wealth on elections. Compounding this is the fact that most political parties do not maintain any accounts, much less are these audited. Most parties do not file an income tax return.
And though the law permitting contribution by companies has been beautifully sterilised by saying that the general body must pass the resolution, much of the contribution by companies is in the form of tax-evaded black cash, all possible taxes are evaded and a significant portion passed on to political parties.
At all times, our political calculations were caste-based. In its heyday after Independence, the Congress set up candidates with an eye to religion and caste. Caste and religion were grossly misused. In more recent years when our politics is beset with parties of clear religious, caste and linguistic bases, the misuse of these during elections have been more blatant.
The third of the three 'C's is criminality. At one time party bosses started using criminals to influence, translate to mean intimidate, the weaker sections of the people to vote in their favour. Before long the political leaders became the protectors of these criminal elements being reached by the law. Suddenly the criminal started asking why he should only help the politician to come and stay in power. The criminal rightly felt that he would be better off being the MP or MLA himself.
Combine the privileges of office; the influence making power on government; the ability to get goodies (college seats, gas connections, phone connections); the influence and control on the civil service; the ability to turn around contract award to the favoured supplier; the provision of faulty, incomplete or even bogus contract supplies; the indulgence first in fringe criminal activities (smuggling, black marketing, adulteration) and then in core criminal activities (real estate, narcotics, trafficking in women, plain intimidation, kidnap and murder), combine all this and you have reached the picture of criminality in politics.
When I come back to you next week, I shall speak to you on how the entire system is now collapsing under the weight of this criminalised political structure.
Cry, my beloved country.
